Splitting the Atom
by Marching Madly Onward
Summary: A pointless romp through Cid Highwind's mind as he ruminates on his pseudo-family. Lord knows he's stuck with them.


**Splitting the Atom**

She's talking again. Why won't she stop talking?

Normally, I'm a freaking master of ignoring stupid crap. It comes with the territory. When you're working with a slab of steel big enough and heavy enough to grind two city blocks into dust, you have to tune out all distractions. It doesn't matter if the new kid has some dumb-as-hell question about where you keep the spare wrenches—even though you've told him fifty frakkin' times—or the Moogles making that weird chirp sound. It doesn't matter, 'cause if you fuck this up, a whole bunch of people are gonna die—me, especially. And I'm awesome. I don't want to die.

Wait. I just said "fuck," didn't I? Fuck! Aw, fuck. F—no. Stop it.

I've already dumped enough change in Aeris's swear jar that she'll have enough cash to buy a gold-plated gummi ship the size of a continent by the time I've finally kicked the habit. But then she'll go and donate to the needy 'cause she's so Friend-to-All-Living-Things. But she isn't here right now, so I think I can let that one slide.

God, I wish she was here. I wouldn't wish Yuffie on anyone but Aeris is one of maybe two people in the whole universe who can handle her for more than two minutes. She must be half-Tonberry on her mother's side or something. You see and at first you think she's kind of cute in a pet cat sort of way. Then she gets closer and closer and you still think she's pretty cute. Then you start to sorta realize that maybe something's wrong. Course, by then, you're already screwed. She shanks you right in the face.

Well, not so much with Yuffie. She doesn't go apeshit on you unless you're a Heartless. Or you're a bad guy. Or you're creepy. Or you wake her up before noon on a Saturday.

She doesn't have to stab you. She starts talking and _talking_ and **_talking_** so much that you wish she really was a Tonberry so she could stab you out of your misery.

"Hey, why don't you go tell the Moogles? I'm sure they'd love to hear it." I know I'm on thin ice, presuming to talk back to Great Queen Pain in the Ass Yuffie Kisaragi, but I'll risk it.

She pouts at me, only it's not really pouting. She's skirting the line between annoyed and—to use her lingo—"stabbity." Oh, you think I'm shitting you? You obviously weren't there when she round housed some poor bastard through a window after he got fresh with her. Not that he didn't have it coming. He was drunk as a skunk and apparently pretty grabby from what Yuffie says. Then again, anything that ends or starts with "Yuffie says" has to come with a mountain of salt. She still swears she beat Leon when she challenged him to arm-wrestling.

At least he's not around, smelling the shop up with his sewer-loving self. I'm starting to think he has some kind of fetish for it. He's practically a local celebrity, between being one of maybe five people in the town who has the balls to stand up to the Heartless. (The boy band looks might help, though.) He's happy to be everyone's whipping boy. He thinks that makes him a better person in some weird karmic, atoning sort of way.

It'll be the death of him.

Sure, we don't talk about it, but we all know it's coming. He's got such a fixation on being the hero that he can't think about anything else. When we first got here, he had the bright idea to go spelunking through the sewers, mapping it out for weak points, escape routes, and little hide aways. He works himself to the bone with that huge hunk of metal he drags around. It's too bad he doesn't realize it does more harm than good. If he's laid up with a dozen pulled muscles and sprains, under threat of a stern talking to from Aeris, how in the blue blazes is he supposed to run off and play cowboy at the drop of a hat?

It's not like that's stopped him before, though. He's hobbled out the door, gunblade firmly in hand, with an arm in a splint and two black eyes. I remember because Yuffie took to calling him a panda.

Huh. She's gone. That was painless. But she probably stole something I won't notice for another week. Then it will magically reappear just where I left it once I have a huge blow-up.

I wish she had done the same for my cigarettes. Once those things were gone, they were gone for good. Now, there's a part of me that knows all about good intentions and all that bull. None of them liked watching me smoke myself to death. Leon just glared at me whenever I would do it while Aeris looked sad. Yuffie was the proactive one. Whenever she wasn't swiping them, she was replacing the tobacco with gunpowder.

I damn near lost an eye.

Yeah, yeah. Noble intentions and all that junk.


End file.
